Should you install The Witcher 3's day one patch?

After a weekend of testing The Witcher 3 on Xbox One, it's fair to say installing its day one patch (version 1.01) is something of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the 588MB file improves frame-rates slightly during play, while fixing minor bugs scattered across the game. In many ways it's a more polished experience with the patch - notably we have less geometry pop-in during cut-scenes, fewer instances of flickering shadows, and a great many more tweaks elsewhere.

"The Witcher 3 is predominantly a 900p game, and the only scenes we've found to run at a full 1080p are the in-engine rendered title screen, and the video cut-scenes. Even reducing the GPU load by looking directly up to the sky shows the game is still rendering at a native 900p. We do notice some indoors scenes rendering at what seems to be a higher resolution than 900p, but even here, it is clearly not a full, native 1080p output."

These guys are Bias clowns. We all know they have their hands on the ps4 version. since primarily it was the ps4 version sent out to everyone. They just want to knock the xb1 version. Also on a side not i saw another site that said the stuttering on cinematics was there before tge day one patch and that they wont get the day one patch until tuesday. So who is lieing here.

So there it is, 1080pr at its fullest. Patch does improves frame rate though it comes with some cons. For the most part frame-rate varies between 30-40fps, with v-sync engaged to avoid tearing. They should do another patch and cap it at 30fps. I don't see the point of having it unlocked.

The vs analysis will be interesting, PS4 its native 1080p but early reports based on review code suggest that Sony's hardware frame-rate is an issue. Probably something that will be fixed with the patch.

The whole dynamic resolution thing is just their way of getting around not saying their game runs in 900p. The game can run 1080p for 5m of the 200 hour game and they can still claim "dynamic 1080p resolution."

With no tangible benefit to game performance It sounds like dynamic scaling was used so that Microsoft could say claim 1080p as a bullet point, so the XBO version is listed the same as other versions but this performance actually makes it seem dishonest.

I know I'll get hated for saying this but the game's panning looks choppy. And here are your "devs know best", and "their artistic vision" at work. Instead of locking it down to 30fps and making sure there is no frame pacing, for a smooth experience, no, they instead leave it unlocked with all sorts of frame pacing issues. And their optimization patch actually lowers the AF and the AO. Yeah, sounds like devs really know best. When everybody and their mother has been saying for years now to make the frame rates stable with no frame pacing on these games. Yet none of these devs seem to get it.

And this is definitely another case of the game being 1080PR on the X1. CODAW is another game that mainly runs at the lower res (like 95% of the time). But now people will think and claim its 1080p.

Well it's a freaking huge game with technology that I've not seen anywhere else yet (unfortunately I can't find the video where they show that only objects within camera range are being rendered by the engine) so I'd assume that their ambition was just too high for current-gen consoles. I'd be curious to see some benchmarks of high end graphics cards running the game on max settings - that way you could tell how bad it really is.

only rendering what's in the camera isn't new tech. It's called occlusion culling, meaning anything not see by the camera angle, including half objects (if half of an object is hidden behind another object) are not rendered. It's used a lot and something I've implemented myself for projects at college.

Ok, nothing new or note worthy from where I stand. I already knew it wasn't 1080p, already knew the patch slightly improves the frame rate. DF didn't give much useful information in this analysis that wasn't already disclosed.

I thought the dynamic resolution would apply to all parts of the game. Not just the title screen and prerendered cutscenes.

This really isn't funny at all because I find it quite deceptive. They did promise dynamic 1080P for the whole game. Limiting it to just the title screen and the prerendered cutscenes is insulting in my opinion.

Anyways with that said the game still looks and plays great on the XB1. I'm sure they will fix the minor frame pacing issues soon.

Completely disagree with that. It's obvious that the whole thing said it would be in "certain" instances when the reality it's for "almost the entirety of the game". To be honest, no one really cares about 1080p cut scenes when the rest of the game runs in 900p.

This is just MS' way to refer to their game as anything but being 900p. Now people can run off and spout that the game scales dynamically, which doesn't at all change the reality that it's a 900p game with 1080p cut scenes.

Does that make it a worse game? Nope. But it is pretty dishonest of them to try and sell the game as anything but 900p. Same way how KZ2 multiplayer wasn't native 1080p, but software generated 1080p.

When developers mention something like "dynamic resolution" everyone expects that to be the whole game not certain parts of it. Which is why its dishonest of them in my opinion.

I agree with you that Microsoft is probably behind the whole thing since they really dont want 900P associated with the XB1 version of the game especially with the marketing deal that they have behind it.

But like you said that doesn't mean that XB1 version is terrible. It only means that the developers were a little not dishonest that's all.

Kind of like when Guerilla claimed that all of killzone was 1080P when it was only the single player that was.

I can understand why you might say it was misleading as perhaps CDPR spun it as a positive, when in fact it's not particularly beneficial. But to call them deceitful and insulting is just too strong when they didn't lie or insult anyone.

***I can understand why you might say it was misleading as perhaps CDPR spun it as a positive, when in fact it's not particularly beneficial. But to call them deceitful and insulting is just too strong when they didn't lie or insult anyone.***

Wait... you can understand why we say it's misleading but not deceitful?

Deceitful: guilty of or involving deceit; deceiving or misleading others.

The game is not 900p, and CDPR have not said anything that is a lie. Microsoft afaik haven't even commented at all. Your argument falls totally flat, and wreaks of concern-trolling. Which is a fine example for a mod to set.

1. Pedantic. And if you think me bringing up that you don't understand the definition of a word primary to your argument is pedantic, then we've got major problems here with your inability to understand how debates work.

2. You don't have to lie to be deceitful or misleading. You just not have to tell the whole truth. Guess what, that's exactly what they've done.

3. *roll eyes at calling me a troll because you disagree with me and don't know the definition of deceptive*

Look at the context of the way I used "deceitful" and it's quite clear that I don't share that view myself. I don't feel CDPR were deceitful. You are bringing up a dictionary definition of the word to counter an argument I'm not even trying to make. Yes, that's pedantic.

I called you a "concern troll", because you are feigning concern. You have no intention of buying the Xbox version of the game and never did, so you have not been mislead. Or have I got that wrong? Honestly?

Those two things are directly related, so why not mention it? This patch should have made the game playable in 1080p at some points, the only points it displays at 1080P is when you're NOT playing the game, but watching instead.

@MK24ever so if DF says it, it must be true? What makes them so credible? If you ever read there comparisons you would know that thete is nothing that does. They are routinely touting a 1080p pictures does more for a game then a lack of anistropic filtering and a lack of shadows which is nonsense. Who cares if a powerline in thw distance when taken in a screenshot and zoomed in 4xs looks jaggie if tye ground 10 feet in front of your character is a textureless mess.

They are all related in the news. It's not like DF themselves didn't bring up resolution as a major element in their own video.

And are we really kidding ourselves that the majority of the talk wouldn't be about the resolution? I think everyone agrees that it would be best to have the benefits of the initial and the day 1 patch, but the reality is only a handful of people won't install the day 1 patch. Especially considering it will be required for the next patch that will improve other aspects of the game.

Just got the game for the PS4 waiting for the patch to download :) I think the frame rate issues come from the game being unlock... Should be 30FPS locked, frame pacing issues looks like the game's dropping to low 20s when its not at all

DL it now.I had this game reserved at gamestop but with no midnight release and i get to play it today at 7pm,gamestop never had a chance.Just have fun with the game and stop worrying about petty things.

Must make good love to the wife early so i can play all night in peace.

They already have the PS4 code why didnt they made a preview or review of the PS4 code,and are only focus in the Xboxone?Some people say the framerate of the PS4 is actually worst than the Xbox one,so i really dont get this preview from DF.

My game judders every half a second, its horrible. Im so pissed. Its like AC Uhity all over again. I dont know what you guys want from me. My ps4 version is unplayable. My brother and i cant be the only ones experiencing this?

If PS4 has worse framerates than XB1(as reported by some) it would be pretty interesting,coz tht would mean gap is really less,as for resolution,yep it depends on power of gpu but its not linear,what I mean is if to bump pixel count by 33%,you don't need 33% better gpu. You need really less than that. Think of this like this: your mom(gpu) is cooking food(game) and number if people is pixels. If she has to cook food for 1 person lets say it takes her x minutes,however if she has to cook for 3 persons it never takes her 3x time coz many processes like cutting onions take fixed time to setup(start) then its fluid and pretty fast,and more complex the food(game) more will be fixed costs(gpu power consumed) It can also be seen in PC GPU scaling with resolution,you don't need 2x power to render double pixels